Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees from US of any nationality, including Americans

Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees from US of any nationality, including Americans
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with President Nayib Bukele at his residence at Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 04 February 2025
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Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees from US of any nationality, including Americans

Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees from US of any nationality, including Americans
  • President Nayib Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio said
  • Rubio was visiting El Salvador to press a friendly government to do more to meet President Donald Trump’s demands for a major crackdown on immigration

SAN SALVADOR: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio left El Salvador on Tuesday with an agreement from that country’s president to accept deportees from the US of any nationality, including violent American criminals now imprisoned in the United States.
President Nayib Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio said after meeting with Bukele at his lakeside country house outside San Salvador for several hours late Monday.
“We can send them, and he will put them in his jails,” Rubio said of migrants of all nationalities detained in the United States. “And, he’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States even though they’re US citizens or legal residents.”
Rubio was visiting El Salvador to press a friendly government to do more to meet President Donald Trump’s demands for a major crackdown on immigration.
Bukele confirmed the offer in a post on X, saying El Salvador has “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.” He said his country would accept only “convicted criminals” and would charge a fee that “would be relatively low for the US but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire working with Trump to remake the federal government, responded on his X platform, “Great idea!!”
After Rubio spoke, a US official said Trump’s Republican administration had no current plans to try to deport American citizens but called Bukele’s offer significant. The US government cannot deport American citizens, and such a move would be met with significant legal challenges.
The State Department describes El Salvador’s overcrowded prisons as “harsh and dangerous.” On its current country information webpage it says, “In many facilities, provisions for sanitation, potable water, ventilation, temperature control, and lighting are inadequate or nonexistent.”
El Salvador has lived under a state of emergency since March 2022, when the country’s powerful street gangs went on a killing rampage. Bukele responded by suspending fundamental rights like access to lawyers, and authorities have arrested more than 83,000 people with little to no due process.
In 2023, Bukele opened a massive new prison with capacity for 40,000 gang members and boasted about serving only one meal per day. Prisoners there do not receive visits, and there are no programs preparing them for reinsertion into society after their sentences and no workshops or educational programs.
El Salvador, once one of the most dangerous countries in the world, closed last year with a record low 114 homicides, a newfound security that has propelled Bukele’s soaring popularity in the country of about 6 million residents.
Rubio arrived in San Salvador shortly after watching a US-funded deportation flight with 43 migrants leave from Panama for Colombia. That came a day after Rubio delivered a warning to Panama that unless the government moved immediately to eliminate China’s presence at the Panama Canal, the US would act to do so.
Migration, though, was the main issue of the day, as it will be for the next stops on Rubio’s five-nation Central American tour of Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic after Panama and El Salvador.
His tour is taking place at a time of turmoil in Washington over the status of the government’s main foreign development agency.
Trump’s administration prioritizes stopping people from making the journey to the United States and has worked with regional countries to boost immigration enforcement on their borders as well as to accept deportees from the United States.
The agreement Rubio described for El Salvador to accept foreign nationals arrested in the United States for violating US immigration laws is known as a “safe third country” agreement. Officials have suggested this might be an option for Venezuelan gang members convicted of crimes in the United States should Venezuela refuse to accept them, but Rubio said Bukele’s offer was for detainees of any nationality.
Rubio said Bukele then went further and said his country was willing to accept and to jail US citizens or legal residents convicted of and imprisoned for violent crimes.
Human rights activists have warned that El Salvador lacks a consistent policy for the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and that such an agreement might not be limited to violent criminals.
Manuel Flores, the secretary general of the leftist opposition party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, criticized the “safe third country” plan, saying it would signal that the region is Washington’s “backyard to dump the garbage.”
After meeting with Bukele, Rubio signed a memorandum of understanding with his Salvadoran counterpart to advance US-El Salvador civil nuclear cooperation. The document could lead to a more formal deal on cooperation in nuclear power and medicine that the US has with numerous countries.
While Rubio was out of the US, staffers of the US Agency for International Development were instructed Monday to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters after Musk announced Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs shut down. Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAID but had delegated that authority so he would not be running its day-to-day operations.
The change means that USAID is no longer an independent government agency as it had been for decades — although its new status will likely be challenged in court — and will be run out of the State Department by department officials.
In his remarks, Rubio stressed that some and perhaps many USAID programs would continue in the new configuration but that the switch was necessary because the agency had become unaccountable to the executive branch and Congress.


Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre
Updated 7 sec ago
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Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan test-fired Saturday a ballistic missile as tensions with India spiked over last week’s deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region.
The surface-to-surface missile has a range of 450 kilometers (about 280 miles), the Pakistani military said.
The launch of the Abdali Weapon System was aimed at ensuring the “operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters,” including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced manoeuvrability features, according to a statement from the military.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated the scientists, engineers and those behind the successful missile test.

Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk
Updated 47 min 10 sec ago
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Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk
  • There was no immediate comment from Ukraine

MOSCOW: The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiysk declared a state of emergency on Saturday after he said a Ukrainian drone attack had damaged residential buildings and injured at least five people, including two children.
Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor, announced his decision on his official Telegram account which showed him inspecting the damage to apartment buildings and giving orders to officials.
Kravchenko said one of the injured people, a woman, was in hospital in a serious situation.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose air force said Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with 183 drones and two ballistic missiles.


US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings
Updated 03 May 2025
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US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump’s Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency’s employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH’s functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH’s key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.
There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the US. 


Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan
Updated 03 May 2025
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Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan
  • Relations between the neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing an attack in disputed Kashmir region
  • Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs

SAINTH: On India’s heavily fortified border with arch-rival Pakistan, residents of farming villages have sent families back from the frontier, recalling the terror of the last major conflict between the rival armies.
Those who remain in the farming settlement of Sainth, home to some 1,500 people along the banks of the broad Chenab river, stare across the natural division between the nuclear-armed rivals fearing the future.
“Our people can’t plan too far ahead,” said Sukhdev Kumar, 60, the village’s elected headman.
“Most villagers here don’t invest beyond a very basic house,” he added.
“For who knows when a misdirected shell may fall from the other side and ruin everything?”
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the worst attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in years.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the April 22 attack at Pahalgam — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs including expelling each other’s citizens.
India’s army said Saturday its troops had exchanged gunfire with Pakistani soldiers overnight along the de facto border with contested Kashmir — which it says has taken place every night since April 24.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both governing part of the disputed territory separately and claiming it in its entirety.
Sainth, with its open and lush green fields, is in the Hindu-majority part of Indian-run Jammu and Kashmir.
Security is omnipresent.
Large military camps dot the main road, with watchtowers among thick bushes.
Kumar said most families had saved up for a home “elsewhere as a backup,” saying that only around a third of those with fields remained in the village.
“Most others have moved,” he said.
The region was hit hard during the last major conflict with Pakistan, when the two sides clashed in 1999 in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains further north at Kargil.
Vikram Singh, 40, who runs a local school, was a teenager at the time.
He remembers the “intense mortar shelling” that flew over their heads in the village — with some exploding close by.
“It was tense then, and it is tense now,” Singh told AFP.
“There is a lot to worry since the attack at Pahalgam... The children are scared, the elderly are scared — everyone is living in fear.”
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad to settle their differences through talks.
The United States has called for leaders to “de-escalate tensions,” neighboring China urged “restraint,” with the European Union warning Friday that the situation was “alarming.
On the ground, Singh seemed resigned that there would be some fighting.
“At times, we feel that war must break out now because, for us, it is already an everyday reality,” he said.
“We anyways live under the constant threat of shelling, so, maybe if it happens, we’d get to live peacefully for a decade or two afterwards.”
There has been a flurry of activity in Trewa, another small frontier village in Jammu.
“So far, the situation is calm — the last cross-border firing episode was in 2023,” said Balbir Kaur, 36, the former village head.
But the villagers are preparing, clearing out concrete shelters ready for use, just in case.
“There were several casualties due to mortar shelling from Pakistan in the past,” she said.
“We’ve spent the last few days checking our bunkers, conducting drills, and going over our emergency protocols, in case the situation worsens,” she added.
Kaur said she backed New Delhi’s stand, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing “to punish every terrorist and their backer” and to “pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
Dwarka Das, 65, a farmer and the head of a seven-member family, has lived through multiple India-Pakistan conflicts.
“We’re used to such a situation,” Das said.
“During the earlier conflicts, we fled to school shelters and nearby cities. It won’t be any different for us now.”


Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say
Updated 03 May 2025
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Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

ATHENS: A woman was killed early Saturday in the northern Greek city of Thessaoloniki when a bomb she was carrying exploded in her hands, police said.
The 38-year-old woman was apparently was carrying the bomb to place it outside a nearby bank around 5 a.m., police said.
Several storefronts and vehicles were damaged by the explosion.
The woman was known to authorities after taking part in several past robberies, according to police, who said they are investigating her possible ties to extreme leftist groups.